Office 365

76 Chapter 3 Administering an Office 365 Account

What’s Next

In this chapter, you discovered the ins and outs of administration—at least as they
­pertain to your Office 365 account. You learned how to set up the space so that the
people you want to have access can log in; you set permissions; you set up the various
programs the way you want them to be used by your team members. You also found out
how to manage service subscriptions and licenses and discovered how to check system
status and get help. The next chapter starts Part II, “Teamwork in the Cloud,” and shows
you how you can get things moving on a team level in Office 365.

2 Teamwork in
the Cloud

NOW THAT  you’ve set up an Office 365 account, created user
a­ ccounts for your team members and assigned permissions (if you’re
the a­ dministrator, anyway), the real fun begins! This part of the book
shows you how to get your team working together by ­using various
features of Office 365. The first chapter gives you a kind of appetizer
plate of d­ ifferent services to sample, and the remaining chapters in this
part show you specifically how to create a team site and begin sharing
files of all types.



CHAPTER 4

What Your Team Can
Do with Office 365

IN THIS CHAPTER: OK , YOU’VE GOT  your Microsoft Office 365 account set up, and you’ve

■ Starting with the end in mind arranged for team members to get into the site. Now it’s time to get
■ Creating a shared space
■ Sharing calendars securely inspired. Whether you are putting together a team to work on a specific
■ Translating content on the fly
■ Making instant contact with project—like planning an amazing special event—or a team that will

team members collaborate over time on many projects, creating a workspace your team
■ Holding online meetings
■ Broadcasting presentations can share and thinking about various things you’d like to accomplish

online together are two important steps in putting together a successful team.
■ Creating and modifying a
This chapter discusses what you need to do to help your team be
­website successful. Envisioning the type of team environment you’d like to
create is a good place to begin. You’ll be doing more brainstorm-
ing than actual site creation in this chapter—the specific steps for
creating your shared worksite is the topic of Chapter 5, “Creating
Your Team Site with SharePoint Online.” This chapter shows you
a variety of tasks you might want to accomplish with your team,
ranging from sharing files to translating documents to broadcast-
ing presentations and more. Depending on the nature of your
work, you might need some features more than others—and this
chapter will help you think through the tasks for creating just the
kind of group experience you hope your team will have.

79

80 Chapter 4 What Your Team Can Do with Office 365

Starting with the End in Mind

Before you begin setting things up online to give your team the tools they need to get
busy, it’s a good idea to think through the goals for your team and envision the pro-
cess—and benchmarks—you can follow to help the team reach those goals successfully.
Envisioning the overall direction—even if you will be inviting the team’s input on that—is
a good way to set the foundation for the team’s work. Here are some questions to get
you started:

■ What is the long-term goal of your team?
■ When do you want to accomplish the goal?
■ Will you have specific roles for various members of your team (designer, writer,

editor, project manager, and so on)?
■ Will you work collaboratively on specific pieces (for example, will an editor and a

designer need to have access to the same document at the same time)?
■ Will you have team meetings at regular intervals (weekly, biweekly, or some other

regular schedule)?

Thinking through the ways in which your team will assign tasks, report on progress, com-
municate one-to-one and to the entire team, and find and work with important files will
help the team work together more smoothly in Office 365. The rest of this chapter offers
specific techniques you can use to prepare your team space to be a hive of productive
activity.

BECOMING A TEAM

Throw a group of people together and give them a common goal and what do you
have? A team.

How well that team works together, however, might have a lot to do with where the
team is in its natural life cycle. In the 1960s, psychologist Bruce Tuckman came up with
a phrase to describe the way teams come together. He described four stages—forming,
storming, norming, and performing—as the process by which the team gets organized
and begins to work together productively. Here’s a quick look at the four stages of the
process:

■ Forming  In this first stage team members are just getting to know one
another. They might be a little anxious, or very polite, wondering what will be
expected of them and how the other team members will behave. The leader’s

Creating a Shared Space Chapter 4 81

role is important in this stage because it’s the most clearly defined role and
helps the rest of the group feel less anxious about what’s to come.
■ Storming  In this stage, people are starting to get to know each other and
personalities start emerging. The leader might feel a little challenged as
people jockey for position and assert what they do best. Storming can bring
out p­ ersonality clashes and struggles over authority. People might push back
on deadlines, “forget” to do important tasks, or rebel against the group in
­others ways. Things might just not be a whole lot of fun as many skirmishes and
struggles rise to the surface.
■ Norming  As a result of the tumultuous nature of the storming stage, ­norming
brings a sense of organizing for the team. The group begins to establish norms
that enable members to know how and when things are submitted, who is
in charge, what the reporting will look like, who to go to with problems, and
so on. In the norming stage, team members are also getting to know each
other better and might turn to each other for help with tasks or questions. As
a result, the team begins to feel more like a team and starts to build trust and
­cooperation.
■ Performing  This stage is the productive phase of the team. With the earlier
stages out of the way and with the benefit of the organizing that went on in the
norming stage, performing enables the team members to do what they need to
do to meet the group goals.

Tuckman later added a fifth stage, called “adjourning,” in which the group
­finishes its work, celebrates its successes, and disbands. Note that not all teams
go through this process exactly this way—some skip steps, and some seem to get
stuck in a particular stage and never get out of it. It’s an interesting paradigm to
keep in mind as you watch your own team come together, though, and it can be
reassuring if you find your team in the tumultuous storming stage.

Creating a Shared Space

One of the challenges of working in the cloud is that, well, you’re working in the cloud.
It’s a bit more difficult to look at someone across a desk and talk about something face
to face (although you can use Lync Online and your webcam for some real facetime).
Your weekly staff meetings in which each person gives an update of his or her part of
the project are harder to pull off. People might be in or out of their office—how do
you know?

82 Chapter 4 What Your Team Can Do with Office 365

Although working in the cloud poses particular contact challenges, it also offers many
great benefits. The first advantage, of course, is that you can create a shared workspace
where your team can access the files they need to complete their work. They can also use
familiar programs, thanks to Office 365, and log in and complete their tasks whenever it’s
convenient.
Some additional benefits Office 365 offers help bridge the gap between your “real
world” needs and your productivity goals. You can find out when others are online—
there’s the possibility for that “face-to-face” meeting—by using the presence technology
available through Lync Online. And you can create a shared workspace—the familiar
board room table—by designing a SharePoint Online site where you can post events,
comments, files, and more.

Displaying the Team Site

SharePoint Online is the place where you’ll find everything you need to create your
shared site. To find SharePoint Online in Office 365, follow these steps:
1. Log in to Office 365 with your user name and password.
2. Click on the Team Site tab at the top of the window. The SharePoint Online team

site appears, ready for you to modify things to suit your needs. (See Figure 4-1.)

Edit tool

FIGURE 4-1  You can customize the SharePoint team site to include the type of content you want to share
with your team.

Creating a Shared Space Chapter 4 83

Click the Edit tool (located just to the left of the Browse tab) to display editing mode. The
ribbon at the top of the page changes to include a set of editing tools you can use to
add pages, change the page layout, and add site elements, such as tables, pictures, video
clips, document libraries, a calendar, and other web parts.

See Also  You’ll learn more about customizing your team site by adding web parts and
other elements in Chapter 5.

PLANNING THE WORK OF YOUR TEAM

Knowing in advance what you want your team to accomplish will have some
bearing on the types of elements you add to your team site. I’ll cover this in more
detail in Chapter 5, when you actually create the team site, but thinking through
what you want to accomplish will plan the overall work of your team.

Here are a couple of ideas along this line:
■ If your team is coming together to do a specific project—for example, the

launch of a new exhibit—you might need to plan to include the following
things in the site: shared calendars with regular team meetings; a document
library for storing marketing materials and designs; announcements so that
team members can see when new items are posted or updated; a way to view
overall deadlines and your progress toward the goal; and online meetings with
presentations and chat, to make sure everyone is headed in the same direction.
■ If your team is working remotely over the long haul—perhaps you are a small
business with offices on a couple of continents—your needs for your team
site might be a little different. You still would benefit from a shared calendar
and regular meetings, but you might also create document libraries for each
member of the team, a public site you all work on, announcements and tasks,
and other web parts that help you socialize as well as complete business-critical
tasks independently and as a team.

Whether your team is working together for a short time or for an i­ndefinite
p­ eriod, be sure to include the basics—calendar, document library, and
a­ nnouncements—as you start out. You can always add to the features of the
site as you go along, when you notice what’s missing that might make your
teamwork a little smoother.

84 Chapter 4 What Your Team Can Do with Office 365

Working with Document Libraries

One great use of your team site is to share documents you all need as you work on your
shared project. You can create multiple document libraries in SharePoint Online and
store Word documents, pictures, media clips, and more—whatever your team needs
­access to.
You’ll find what you need for creating a document library when you click the Edit tool in
the Team Site and click the Insert tab in the Editing Tools tab. Click Document Library to
display the tools for creating and working with libraries. (See Figure 4-2.)

FIGURE 4-2  Click the Insert tab in the Editing Tools, and choose Document Library and New Document
Library to create a new place to store shared files.

Choose New Document Library to create the new space for your shared team files. Type
a name for the new library, and click OK; Office 365 then inserts the new library on the
current page. You can then click the Add Document link and upload the files you need to
the new document library. (See Figure 4-3.)

FIGURE 4-3  After you upload files to the document library, other team members can access and
share the files.

Creating a Shared Space Chapter 4 85

Tip Because the new document library is placed on the current page, you
might want to create a new page before adding a document library.
You’ll learn how to do this in detail in Chapter 5, but the quick steps are
to scroll down on the Home page and click Create New Page on the right
side of the page.

Creating a Space for Announcements

Another thing you might want to do right off the bat with your team site involves creat-
ing a space where your team can share upcoming announcements related to your shared
work. You might post news about upcoming meetings, post the results of surveys, or
share ideas you want to discuss with the team. Like everything else in SharePoint Online,
your announcement lists are completely customizable and you can add multiple lists to
share different types of information—whatever best fits your team. (See Figure 4-4.)

FIGURE 4-4  Create team announcements to let everybody on the team know what’s next on your
task list.

86 Chapter 4 What Your Team Can Do with Office 365

WHAT ELSE CAN YOU DO IN SHAREPOINT?

This section has given you a few ideas for the types of things you might want to do first
with your SharePoint team site, but you can add all kinds of elements and customize
the look and feel of the site to your heart’s content. You can even create a public web-
site (not simply a team site) where you share your creations with the world. Some other
tasks you might want to do in SharePoint include these:
■ Add files.
■ Change page permissions.
■ Change the site layout.
■ Set alerts so that you know when content is updated or added.
■ Rename the site.
■ Add a site description.
■ Customize the HTML for the site.
■ Add pictures and tables.
■ Create a new contacts list.
■ Check files in and out.
■ Add a calendar.
■ Add special web parts to increase the functionality of the site.
■ Edit the site in SharePoint Designer.

Sharing Calendars Securely

One of the challenges to working with a group of people you rarely see is that it can be
tough to get everybody in the same place at the same time. For that reason, being able
to share calendars so that your colleagues can see at a glance whether you’re available
for a team meeting is an important way to stay in touch.

With Office 365, you can easily manage your calendar and share it with other members
on your team. (See Figure 4-5.) The appointments and meeting announcements you save
and send are secure in your cloud environment while still being easily accessible to those
with the permissions to share your information. You can also change your permissions at
any time, so if you have team members who come and go, you can easily add others to
your share list.

Sharing Calendars Securely Chapter 4 87

FIGURE 4-5  You can easily share your calendar in a secure environment using Office 365.

SCHEDULING FOR TEAM SUCCESS
So how often do you need to schedule team meetings, group meetings, project
meetings, and post-meeting meetings? One of the nice things about working in
the cloud is that you can avoid being meeting-ed to death, which is sometimes
hard to avoid in the face-to-face business culture.
The number of times you meet—and the topics you meet about—will depend in
part on the type of team you’re creating, what your focus is, and who your lead-
ers are. Truly collaborative teams might enjoy getting together for some creative
time and status updates once a week or so. Teams that have a top-down man-
agement style might be more regimented, with mandatory team meetings once
a week at a specific time. Of course some teams—especially high-performing
sales teams—meet each morning to go over the plan for the day. So it’s your
call—and your need—that should determine how often you meet with your
team.
Whatever timeframe you choose, try to be consistent with your meetings, at least
while your group is going through the forming and storming stages. Once you
get to norming, the meetings will sort themselves out, but having some kind of
structure to hold to—such as, “We’ll have a team meeting every Wednesday at
9:00 a.m. EST”—can help the group begin to get organized.

88 Chapter 4 What Your Team Can Do with Office 365

Tip When you’re setting up meetings for the first time, remember that
­different team members might be in different time zones. If team
­members have set the time in Office 365 to accurately reflect their
l­ocal time, the Office 365 Calendar should take the time difference into
­account when you set up the appointment. But if the team member
hasn’t set the local time, you might need to be extra careful when you set
up those meetings to ensure that everyone logs in at the right time.

Translating Content on the Fly

When you work with colleagues who might be located anywhere on the planet, you
might encounter language issues now and again. It’s one of the realities of the global
marketplace—translation tools are a feature you really do need in your cloud ­computing
toolkit. Translation tools are actually part of Office 2010—in Word, PowerPoint, and
Excel—and you’ll be able to use them in Office 365 with teammates near and far. U­ sing
the translation features, you can easily translate words and phrases as you work on
­documents or converse with colleagues anywhere in the world.

For example, when you open a Word document in Office 365, click Edit in Word. The file
opens in the familiar Word 2010 interface. You can then turn on the Mini Translator tool
by clicking the Review tab and clicking Translate in the Language group. Click Choose
Translation Language, click the Translation To arrow, and choose the language you want
to use from the list. Click OK, and click Translate once again; this time click Mini Translator
to turn the feature on. (See Figure 4-6.) Now you can highlight a word or phrase while
you work and the Mini Translator tool will show you the translation in real time (and even
pronounce it for you if you click Play). Nice!

FIGURE 4-6  Select the language you want to translate to, and click the Mini Translator to turn on the
translation feature.

Making Instant Contact with Team Members Chapter 4 89

MAKING SURE LANGUAGE ISN’T A BARRIER

If your team spans continents and cultures, it’s a good idea to address language
challenges right off the bat. If you’re creating material for public use, you might
want to strive for a standard that is easy to translate into different languages,
which means you need to avoid local phrases that won’t be easily translated later.

You can also have a conversation with your team about preferred languages and
how you can all best understand each other, in email, online, and on the phone.
You might choose one common language that most of your team members can
use fluently, or default to English if that’s a commonly known language.

If your team members use words or phrases you don’t understand, ask them
what they mean—this is much better than guessing or implying that you
­understand when you really don’t. You might miss something important that
way!

The Mini Translator tool offers translations for nearly 30 different languages, and
additional languages are being added all the time. So use the Mini T­ ranslator
regularly to convert words and phrases you don’t recognize into content you
can use.

Making Instant Contact with Team Members

Contact has been getting easier for most of us who work with technology over the last,
oh, say 10 years. We used to write and deliver memos, make phone calls, and schedule
meetings. Today we send email messages or—if that’s too slow—we can send instant
messages to others who are available online at the same time we are.

Instant messaging is nothing new, of course. Windows Live Messenger and other instant
messaging programs have been around for years. The thing that’s new is the ability to
communicate seamlessly with team members from within your work environment. Early
on, instant messaging was a bit of a challenge to secure, and large corporations most
­often just disallowed the use of instant messaging while they figured out the security
piece. Now in Office 365, you can use Lync Online to easily and securely chat with col-
leagues in real time without worrying about who might be intercepting the messages
you send. It’s safe and secure and done within the Office 365 environment.

90 Chapter 4 What Your Team Can Do with Office 365

ONE-TO-ONE AND TEAM-BASED COMMUNICATIONS

When your group is just forming, you might be concerned that too much o­ ne-to-one
conversation through instant messaging and email might leave the rest of the group
out. Will the team become a team if people pair up and leave everyone else out?
Luckily, you can invite more than one person to instant messaging conversations, and
you can also keep a log of your conversation so that you can share it with the full team
later if you choose.
You can help the entire team connect and communicate by scheduling online team
meetings regularly during the forming and storming stages. Beyond that, don’t worry
too much about one-to-one communications unless you’re concerned that team
­members aren’t getting their tasks done (and that can be an item on the next team
meeting agenda).

Holding Online Meetings

Especially if your team is scattered all over the globe, being able to assemble everyone in
one place at a given time is really important. With Office 365, you can use the Calendar
tool to schedule your team meetings and Lync Online to easily meet online and make
sure everyone is on the same page.
When you click Meet Now by clicking the Options button in the top right corner of the
Lync window, Lync displays the Group Conversation dialog box and asks you to choose
the type of audio you want to use for the meeting. By default, Lync uses its own inte-
grated audio and video. (See Figure 4-7.) You can also ask participants to call you at a
number you specify if you have a particular conference calling number you prefer to use.

Holding Online Meetings Chapter 4 91

FIGURE 4-7  You can use Microsoft Lync to meet online with your team—either at your set meeting time
or on the fly.

CALL IT A GROUP
Team meetings can help your team members feel like they’re in sync—or they
could be boring ho-hum meetings that members resent taking the time to
­attend. For best results, keep your meetings short and sweet—and keep them
positive and focused.
Members will enjoy participating in something they feel good about or
­something that helps them solve problems they are experiencing. So you might
want to set up your team meetings to follow a general process like this:
■ Welcome to the group
■ Team successes from last week
■ Team focus for this week
■ Individual reports
■ Something funny (or a tip or positive customer experience)
■ Goodbye for now

92 Chapter 4 What Your Team Can Do with Office 365

This whole process might take only 15 minutes, but if you follow it regularly, you’ll get
the work of the team done, celebrate some successes (which builds momentum), and
help people feel like it was a good use of their time. Not bad for a little time in the
cloud.

Broadcasting Presentations Online

The online broadcasting capabilities of PowerPoint 2010 is another big change that was
part of Office 2010. But now, as an Office 365 user, you have the benefit of broadcast-
ing presentations live to your team and your clients—no matter where in the world they
happen to be. You can simply prepare your presentation with PowerPoint Web App
(available in Office 365) and then prepare it for presenting online. This involves creat-
ing a web link you send in an email to others so that they can view the presentation live
in their web browser. One of the present limitations of this feature is that any audio or
video you’ve added to the presentation won’t be visible over the web; but you can set up
a conference call in addition to the presentation and talk your team members through it
slide by slide.

Tip Even people outside your team or those not using Office 365 or
P­ owerPoint 2010 will be able to view the presentation if you send them
the web link, so this is a good way to share product or service informa-
tion with clients and customers even if they aren’t using Office 365.

WHAT MAKES A GREAT ONLINE BROADCAST?

The most important thing to keep in mind about an online broadcast you’re p­ reparing
is that you want your message—and your goal—to be as clear as possible. Here are a
few ways you might use the broadcasting feature with your team:
■ You want to show everyone how to use the team site.
■ You are sharing design options for your new product packaging.
■ You want to share a presentation you plan to give at an upcoming company meeting.

Creating and Modifying a Website Chapter 4 93

■ You want to invite team input on a presentation about your work.
■ You are learning and sharing research about a specific topic that affects your

work together.

A good online broadcast takes into account that the audience members have
other things to do—and might be doing them while you think they’re watching
your presentation! So make sure that the presentation is engaging—p­ resenting
information very clearly and pausing at key points for audience questions or
interaction.

Be sure to use an audio component—whether it’s a traditional conference call
or a call you set up through Lync Online—so that your team members can share
their own ideas and ask questions as needed.

You can also prepare and share handouts and other collateral materials by
­posting them in your team document library in SharePoint Online or by emailing
them to the team before the broadcast begins.

Creating and Modifying a Website

Not only does SharePoint Online enable you to create a team site where you can create
document libraries, share announcements, set up meetings, and more, but it gives you
the means to create a public-facing website that shares your information with the world.
Having the team site—which is invisible to the public—and the public site together in
one tool is a real time-saver and can help you focus clearly on the different tasks and
communications you need to both manage your team and present your wares to the
world.

You’ll find the link for viewing your public website in the Website area at the bottom of
the Home page. To edit the public website, however (not simply view it), you need to
click Admin at the top of the Office 365 page and scroll down to the Website area. Click
the Edit Website link to begin working with the content on your pages. By default, your
website includes five pages: Home, About Us, Contact Us, Site Map, and Member Login.
You can then customize the content on the page, add new pages, change the site theme
or layout, or edit the website as you see fit. (See Figure 4-8.)

94 Chapter 4 What Your Team Can Do with Office 365

FIGURE 4-8  You can easily apply new themes and layouts to the website you create for your team.

TIP If you’ve worked with Office Live Small Business, you’ll notice that the
web tools are the same ones you used in that program. You can easily
edit, format, and add web components to your pages using the simple
web tools provided now in SharePoint Online.

See Also  You’ll learn all about customizing the content in the SharePoint Online website
in Chapter 5.

What’s Next

This chapter focused on some of the tasks you can start with as you begin to pull your
team together. The next chapter goes into greater detail about customizing your team
site in SharePoint Online. You’ll learn how to tailor the content just the way you want it
for your team and create a site you’ll share with the world as well.

CHAPTER 5

Creating Your Team
Site with SharePoint
Online

IN THIS CHAPTER: S HARE P O INT ONLINE  is likely to be the heart of your cloud

■ Planning your team site ­operation, helping you stay in touch with the team, share documents,
■ Creating a simple team site—
post announcements and updates, and manage the various tasks that
fast
■ Putting some thought into the will be part and parcel of your projects. You do, after all, need a space

team site d­ esign where your team can come together in some fashion and share what
■ Choosing a site theme
■ Changing the text layout of your you’re working on.

page The basic SharePoint Online site provided for you in Office 365 is
■ Posting an update just the beginning—you can customize the site to include all sorts
■ Adding and formatting pictures of tools and web parts that suit the type of information you need
■ Adding a new page to manage and the results you want to create. You can also use
■ Entering and editing content SharePoint Online to create a forward-facing website that enables
■ Adding web parts you to share your work with the world.
■ Sharing your site
The point is to create a site that looks and feels like a home base
for you and your team—a virtual office space where you can find
the files you need, chat with your colleagues over coffee, get
updates on important tasks easily, and feel you’re in sync with the
group. The last chapter introduced you to some of the tasks you
might want to accomplish in your team site; this chapter shows you
how to add text and images and rearrange the furniture so that it
fits just the way you and your team like to work.

95

96 Chapter 5 Creating Your Team Site with SharePoint Online

Planning Your Team Site

If you’ve ever been on any kind of team, one fact you know to be true is that no two
teams are created equal. Each team has its own personality—some are friendly, some are
focused, some are all business. Teams have different goals—such as preparing for a big
event, writing the curriculum for a new training project, or producing an annual report.
Teams also have different kinds of leadership, ranging from a kind of rotating, team-
based leadership to a top-down style with a “my way or the highway” type of person at
the head.

The type of site you create in SharePoint should reflect the work style that fits your team
best. If you like to keep everybody in the loop about upcoming deadlines and recently
completed tasks, make sure you display announcements and updates in a prominent
place. If you just want to get down to business and provide a common space for files you
all use, you can add a document library right there on the home page of your team site.

Creating a Simple Team Site—Fast

You can spend a lot of time—in fact, there are whole books written about—designing a
SharePoint site to reflect just the types of information you want it to offer. But d­ esigning
your site can be as simple as throwing some words and pictures on a page, if that’s what
you choose. If you just want a shared space to post information—and your team will be
together only for a short time—that amount of effort might be just right for what you
need. If this is what you’re looking for, and you are an Admin user, you can create an
Express Site in SharePoint Online.

The fastest way to create a functional SharePoint site is to use the Express Site options.
This enables you, for example, to quickly create and share information about the project
your team is working on. This site is based on a ready-made template that includes a
document library, where you can store your files, and an announcements list.

To create an Express Site, follow these steps:

1. In Office 365, click Team Site at the top of the screen.
2. In the team site, click the Site Actions arrow in the top left of the ribbon.
3. Choose More Options.
4. In the Create window, click Site and scroll to and click Express Team Site.

(See ­Figure 5-1.)

Putting Some Thought into the Team Site Design Chapter 5 97

5. Enter a title and the URL where you want the site to appear.
6. Click Create. The new site is added beneath the existing top-level team site of your

site collection, and you can begin to add your own content and customize it to
meet your team’s needs.

FIGURE 5-1  Click Express Team Site to create a new team site quickly.

Putting Some Thought into the Team Site Design

If you’re envisioning a team that will work together for a while, one that really needs
to communicate well, have access to the latest versions of files, and be able to see at a
glance what the various members of the team are working on, putting some thought
into the design of the site will help you create a cloud experience your team members
will be likely to appreciate and use. You might want to get together team members (on
the phone or using Microsoft Lync) to discuss the following questions:

■ What are your team goals?
■ How long will your team be together?
■ Will you focus on one project or multiple projects?
■ Will you have regular team meetings?

98 Chapter 5 Creating Your Team Site with SharePoint Online

These types of function questions will help you determine what types of web parts and
tools you’d like to add to your team site. If your team will be together over the long haul,
creating multiple projects, you might want to envision a site with multiple pages that can
each contain the files and updates related to one specific item you’re working on.

Tip When it’s time to think about the site you want the public to see, asking
similar kinds of questions about function can help you plan the content
you want to include. For example, what do you want your clients or
c­ ustomers to be able to do on your site? Will they download a report?
Sign up for your latest catalog? Submit an idea? Your answer to those
questions will help you think through the types of elements you want
to build into your site design. You learn more about how to design the
site clients and customers will see in Chapter 12, “Designing Your Public
Website.”

Thinking through the overall look and function of your site also gives you the chance
to throw a few design touches into the mix. You can easily choose—and change—site
themes that coordinate the color scheme used throughout the site. You might want to
choose a look that corresponds with your company logo, for example, or select a color
and layout style that best reflects the type of content you’ll be creating.

As you can see in Figure 5-2, SharePoint’s Editing Tools Insert tab offers you the tools
you need to add all sorts of elements to your team pages. You can insert the following
elements by using the ready-made tools already placed on the ribbon for you:

■ Tables

■ Pictures

■ Links

■ Files

■ Document libraries

■ A calendar

■ Announcements

Choosing a Site Theme Chapter 5 99

FIGURE 5-2  SharePoint’s Editing Tools Insert tab offers a number of tools you can add to the pages in
your team site.

Tip And if you want to add special functionality to your pages, you can click
the Insert tab in the Editing Tools tab and click More Web Parts. You can
add specialized tools to your page that enable you to gather informa-
tion from your team, track the location of various team members, get
info about the latest updates, post media, and much more. Check out the
section, “Adding Web Parts” later in this chapter for the specifics on these
great site tools.

Choosing a Site Theme

One of the first choices you’re likely to make as you develop your team site will have to
do with how you want the site to look. SharePoint Online makes it easy for you to apply
a coordinated color scheme—which carries through all tools you add to the site—that
creates a kind of distinctive look and feel for your team space.

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We know a lot more about color choices than we used to, especially when it comes to
creating a work environment with the right feel. Cool colors—like light blue or green—
create a kind of relaxing atmosphere; you might use these colors when you’re working
on a high-stress project and want to help everybody maintain their equilibrium and not
stress out. For low-energy teams that need to be cranked up a notch, use vivid colors like
reds and oranges to stimulate attention and get some of those creative juices flowing.
By default, the Office 365 color choice is set to Default (no theme), which gives you a
very basic, clean-cut look for your team site. To change the default theme to one with a
bit more color definition, follow these steps:
1. Display the site by logging in to Office 365 and clicking Team Site.
2. Click Site Actions.
3. Choose Site Settings.
4. In the Look And Feel area, click Site Theme.
5. In the panel on the right in the Select A Theme window (shown in Figure 5-3), click

the names of different themes to see the color combination on the preview grid
on the left side of the screen. The fonts selected for headings and body text also
change to show your selection.
6. When you have selected the theme you like, click the Apply button at the bottom
of the list.

FIGURE 5-3  Choose from a variety of color palettes that control the color of hyperlinks, headings,
and body text on your site.

Changing the Text Layout of Your Page Chapter 5 101

Tip If you create an additional team site and you want to change the theme
for that site (but not the top-level site), click the tab for the new team site
before you click Site Actions.

Office 365 processes your changes and displays the team site with the new theme
s­ election in place.

You can change your site theme as often as you like until you settle on a style you want
to keep. You might want to choose a theme that corresponds to your company logo,
your product packaging design, or some other set of colors that have some relevance
to what you’re trying to do. Or, as an exercise designed to help your team feel more
involved in the process, you could ask the team to vote on the color selections they like
best.

For best results, and a cohesive team, however, get your theme choices established early
and keep the same look and feel for the duration of your project. Too much c­ hanging
right off the bat can make your team feel scattered, like the workspace has no real
definition. A solid choice at the beginning and consistency throughout the project helps
establish stability and a sense of identity for the team.

Note Only those with Admin privileges will be able to make the theme
c­ hanges, however, so you might have to choose different themes over a
series of days and have team members vote for the themes they like best.

Changing the Text Layout of Your Page

The way your page is laid out is another important choice that contributes to the overall
look of your team site. The layout also affects the way tools appear in the columns on
the page, which of course affects how easily (or not) your team can find what they need.
There’s no single overarching text layout feature that affects all the pages you create;
instead, you need to choose the layout for each page independently.

If you’ve been browsing the Web for any length of time, you have no doubt seen all kinds
of layout styles, and some work better than others, depending on what publishers want
to accomplish with their sites. Some are packed with information three or four columns
wide; others are more open and might have a huge graphic front and center on the

102 Chapter 5 Creating Your Team Site with SharePoint Online

page, with a little text underneath. Many sites that are designed around sharing bits of
information use some kind of columnar format to do that—you might have a n­ avigation
column on the left, a center column with primary articles, and an “extra” c­ olumn on
the right. That, of course, is just one example—notice as you browse other sites what
you like and what you don’t. And bring that knowledge back to your ­SharePoint Online
­experience when you’re creating the user interface for your team.
To choose the layout you want to apply to the current page, follow these steps:
1. Select the team site page you want to edit, and click Edit to the left of the

Browse tab.
2. In the Editing Tools Format Text tab, click Text Layout in the Layout group.
3. Click the option in the Text Layout list you want to apply. (See Figure 5-4.)

FIGURE 5-4  In Editing mode, click Text Layout in the Editing Tools Format Text tab to change the
layout of the current page.

The layout is applied to the page, and your existing content is rearranged to fit the new
layout. You can change the layout you’ve selected at any time by choosing Text Layout
again and selecting a different option. You can also hide, remove, or modify individual
text boxes that have content in them by clicking the arrow in the upper right corner of
the text box and choosing Minimize, Delete, or Edit Web Part. (See Figure 5-5.)

Posting an Update Chapter 5 103

FIGURE 5-5  You can hide, remove, or change a text object by clicking the down arrow in the upper right
corner of the text box.

You can go ahead and add introductory content to your page by clicking in the text box
and adding a heading and opening paragraph. Use the Formatting tools in the Font
group to apply the format you want to the text.

Posting an Update

One thing you might want to do—and something you can do at any time (whether
you’ve chosen your theme and layout yet or not)—is post a note to let your team
­members know what’s going on. By default, your team site Home page includes a Posts
area, just beneath the Introduction area at the top of the screen.
To add a new note, click in the notes area and, in the List Tools List tab that appears, click
New Item in the New group at the far left end of the ribbon. Click New Item, as shown in
Figure 5-6.

104 Chapter 5 Creating Your Team Site with SharePoint Online

FIGURE 5-6  Click the Posts area, and click New Item to add a post to the page.

In the Posts - New Item dialog box that appears (shown in Figure 5-7), type a title and
the body content for your post. If you want the post to automatically expire, click the
calendar symbol to the right of the Expires box and choose the date on which you want
the note to expire. Click Save to add your post to the page. The information appears on
the page below the post box so that your entire team can see it when they log in.

FIGURE 5-7  Enter a title and body for your note, and click Save.

Adding and Formatting Pictures Chapter 5 105

Tip This is a small idea, but it can add up to a big benefit—the posts you add,
and add consistently, can really set the overall tone for your team site. If
your notes are always reminding people about upcoming deadlines, folks
might dread your notes after a while. But if you mix up your notes with
reminders, news, and celebrations, remembering to give team members
props when they accomplished a goal or finished a task, people will
enjoy logging in and seeing the latest posts—especially if they are being
recognized for something!

Note If you want to edit the post you’ve just added, you can do so easily. Click
the post, and the List Tools List tab appears on the ribbon. Click Edit Item
in the Manage group. The Post appears in the View tab. Click Edit Item
once again, make your changes, and click Save.

Adding and Formatting Pictures

And, of course, even if you’re working on a ho-hum project with lots of ho-hum data
and not-very-exciting personalities, you can always spruce up your space by sharing
i­mages—of products, people, buildings, flowers, or other fun or interesting images
related to your team or project. Adding pictures to a page gives the page energy and
life, even if the pictures aren’t the most exciting in the world. Statistics show that people
read and retain information better when they have images on the page to help rest their
eyes (and reinforce the content). So think through ways to include some visuals on your
page—even if they are just product pictures or the company logo.

So whether you have a functional reason to include photos—such as showing the latest
product images you’ll use in your catalog, or adding corporate head shots so that people
can see each other in the site—or you simply want to decorate a little bit, the actual
process for adding pictures is simple:

1. Display the page of the team site you want to change, and click to position the
cursor where you want to add the picture.

2. Click Edit to the left of the Browse tab.

3. Click the region on the displayed page where you want to insert the picture.

4. Click the Editing Tools Insert tab.

106 Chapter 5 Creating Your Team Site with SharePoint Online

5. Click Picture. (See Figure 5-8.)

FIGURE 5-8  Click the Editing Tools Insert tab, and choose Picture to begin the process of adding
art to the site.

6. Choose From Computer if you want to place an image that you have saved on
your hard drive. Choose From Address if you want to use a picture from another
website.

7. In the Select Picture dialog box (shown in Figure 5-9), click Browse and navigate to
the folder containing the file you want to use. Click the file, and click Open.

FIGURE 5-9  Click Browse, and navigate to the folder on your computer where the picture you
want to use is stored.

8. Choose the folder you want the picture to be uploaded into, and click OK.

Adding and Formatting Pictures Chapter 5 107

9. In the Site Assets dialog box, type a title for the image (which also serves
as ­alternate text for readers who can’t see the visual), and click Save. (See
F­ igure 5-10.)

FIGURE 5-10  Enter a title for the picture in the Site Assets dialog box.

The picture is added to your page, and the editing tools appear so that you can fine-tune
the way the image looks on your page.

Note The Site Assets folder is probably fine for storing your pictures unless
you want to create a specific folder related to your current project. If
you have already created another folder and want to save the uploaded
image to that folder, click the Upload To arrow and choose the folder you
want. Then click OK.

Editing Your Picture

If you’ve done any website work in the past, you probably remember how much of a
pain it was to get images in the site that look just the way you want them to. And if you
really wanted to change a few picture basics—like maybe add a border, change the size
of the image, or realign it on the region of the page where you placed the picture—you
needed to remember the commands so that you could manipulate the picture by hand.

Well, not any more. With Office 365, once you place the picture on the page, the Picture
Tools Design tab displays the tools you need to make those sorts of changes easily. With
just a few clicks and keystrokes, you’re done. Here are the simple steps:

1. Click the image you just added to the page. The Picture Tools Design tab appears.
(See Figure 5-11.)

108 Chapter 5 Creating Your Team Site with SharePoint Online

2. To change the way the image aligns with the text on the page, click Position and
choose the option you want from the displayed list.

3. To add or remove a border, click Image Styles and click your choice.
4. To resize a picture, click in the Horizontal Size or Vertical Size box and type the

new measurement for the image (in pixels). If you want to preserve the aspect
ratio of the picture, leave the Lock Aspect Ratio check box selected.
5. When you’re finished making changes, simply click outside the picture and the
tools disappear.

FIGURE 5-11  Use the tools on the Picture Tools Design tab to enter the alternate text, change the
position, or resize the image.

Tip The Change Picture tool on the Picture Tools Design tab is a real
t­imesaver once you’ve got an image on the page in the size and ­position
you like. You can just swap out a picture by clicking Change Picture,
­navigating to the folder where the image is stored, selecting it, and
c­ licking Open. The new picture is placed in the same position as the
­previous one, and the same settings are applied to the new image. Nice!

Adding a New Page Chapter 5 109

Adding a New Page

When you first begin working with your team site, of course, SharePoint Online has
s­ tarted the process for you by giving you both a team site and a public-facing website
that you can use to share information with your clients and prospective customers. But
part of thinking through the overall plan for your team site means envisioning what ­other
pages you want to include. Depending on the type of team you’re creating—and the
type of work you all need to do together—your site will need different types of pages.
So what kind of pages will you want to add? In a later section, you’ll learn about web
parts, but you might want to create different page for different functions. For example,
one page might contain your marketing strategy, a document library of marketing files
you use, some marketing images, and a post area where those on your team who are
focusing on marketing can update the others about their project tasks. Another page
might be a general team page, in which you use social media type updates, announce-
ments, and more to help the team stay in sync. Another page might have a log of
­deliverables—which pieces need to be reviewed when.
To add a page to your team site, follow these steps:
1. Click the [+ Add New Page] link in the navigation bar on the left side of the screen.

(See Figure 5-12.)
2. In the New Page dialog box, type a name for the new page and click Create.

Click to add a new page.
FIGURE 5-12  Click [+ Add New Page] in the navigation panel on the left to add a new page to
your team site.

Office 365 then creates the page with the new name you entered and displays the blank
page, ready for you to add your content.

110 Chapter 5 Creating Your Team Site with SharePoint Online

Entering and Editing Content

Adding content to your page really is as easy as clicking and typing. You can, of course,
format the text to your heart’s content—similar to the techniques you use every day in
Microsoft Word—and you can copy and paste information into Office 365 as you would
any other application.

When you first add a new page, Office 365 displays the blank page and positions the
cursor in the top area of the screen, ready for you to type your first bit of text. You can
simply click the tool you want in the Editing Tools Format Text tab to change the format
of your text.

When you open an existing page, you need to click the Edit tool, to the left of the
Browse tab, to display the page in editing mode. The Editing Tools tab appears so that
you can make the changes you want to make to the page. You might want to

■ Change the font size, style, or color.
■ Format the text and set paragraph alignment.
■ Choose specific text styles for the content.
■ Apply markup styles to the text you add.
■ Identify the language you used for the content you’ve added.

The following sections touch on some of these editing tasks. Many of you already know
how to do these tasks from your work with other word processing programs.

Formatting Your Text

The basic steps involved in typing and formatting the text, headings, captions, and other
content on your page is super simple. When you click in a text box on a page in your
team site, the Editing Tools tab appears, showing the Format Text tab by default.

To format text you’ve already typed, simply select the text and then choose a new setting
in the Font group in the Format Text tab. You can change the font, size, and style (bold,
italic, underline, strikethrough, subscript, and superscript), apply highlighting of various
colors, change the color of the text, or clear all formatting current applied to the text.

Entering and Editing Content Chapter 5 111

Adding Text Styles

SharePoint Online includes a number of text styles you can apply to the text on your
pages. Click Styles in the Layout group to display a menu of style options. You’ll find the
styles shown in Figure 5-13. To apply one of the styles to existing text, simply highlight
the text and choose the style. You can also apply a style before you begin typing by
clicking to position the cursor and then choosing the style.

FIGURE 5-13  You can apply a text style to your text before or after you type.

112 Chapter 5 Creating Your Team Site with SharePoint Online

Applying Markup Styles

Because you’re working on the web with Office 365, having a tool that enables you to
apply markup styles directly to your text is a good thing. This helps you style your team
site pages the way you would prepare your website pages using HTML markup styles.
If you’ve done any work with markup languages in the past, you might recognize the
styles shown here:

Again, you can apply the markup styles to the text after you add it or before you type it.
Either way, the styles will be embedded in the HTML for the site and will be recognized
and displayed properly no matter which browsers your teammates might be using.

Coding for Language

On the far right side of the Markup group of the Editing Tools Format Text tab, you’ll find
the Languages tool. You can use this tool to add a markup tag to your content that tells
the browser which language is being used. For example, if you have a word or phrase in
Italian for your teammates in Italy (shown in Figure 5-14), you can select that phrase, click
the Languages arrow, and choose Italian from the list. This tells the browser the language
being used so that it is represented properly in team members’ browsers if the web
browser supports this.

Adding Web Parts Chapter 5 113

FIGURE 5-14  Apply language markup when you have words or phrases in other languages on your page.

Tip If you need help in the translation department, you can display a file in
an Office 2010 Web App and then open it in Word, Excel, PowerPoint,
or OneNote on your computer to get access to the new Mini-Translation
tool, which enables you to translate words and phrases on the fly. What’s
more, you can translate the text and then copy it from the application
and paste it right onto your SharePoint ­Online page. Pretty slick.

Adding Web Parts

Web parts are exciting interactive tools you can use on your team site to add all sorts
of functionality to the pages. The Editing Tools Insert tab contains the Web Parts group
with ready-made Web parts you can insert directly on your page. These web parts can
do the following:

■ Add a document library to your page.
■ Insert a new or existing calendar on the team page.
■ Create or add an announcements list.
■ Add a list of contacts to the page.

114 Chapter 5 Creating Your Team Site with SharePoint Online

The More Web Parts tool includes a number of specialized elements you can use to
expand the functionality of your site. Depending on what you want to do with your site,
you can add Web parts that do the following things:

■ Deliver content that is relevant to individual users.
■ Add a site assets list.
■ Show the whereabouts of your team members.
■ Post upcoming events.
■ Add a phone call memo tool.
■ Add an image viewer or a slideshow web part.
■ Insert a web part that delivers Microsoft Silverlight content.
■ Add a user task list.
■ Create a list of team members in the site.
To add a web part to a page in your team site, begin by displaying the page on which
you want to add the part. Then follow these steps:
1. Click in the region of the team page where you want to add the web part.
2. Click the Editing Tools Insert tab.
3. Click the web part—for example, Document Library—you want to add to your

page. (See Figure 5-15.)
4. If you have more than one document library already created, a list appears so that

you can choose the one you want to add. You can also choose New Document
Library if you want to create a new one.

FIGURE 5-15  You can easily add web parts to your team page using the Web Parts tools in the
Editing Tools Insert tab.

Sharing Your Site Chapter 5 115

Sharing Your Site

Even though your SharePoint Online team site is meant to be a secure environment for
you and your team to work in, you can invite other team members to join you once you
get the site going. To share a team site with someone else, follow these steps:
1. Select your team site from your Office 365 home page.
2. Click Site Actions on the far left side of the ribbon.
3. Choose Share Site.
4. In the Share Your SharePoint Site window (shown in Figure 5-16), enter the email

addresses of the team members you want to add to the site. You can click Check
Names, to the right of the text fields, to ensure that you are choosing participants
in your company address book.
5. Alternately, you can click the Users In This Group arrow and select the group you
want to use to find the visitors or members you want to invite.
6. Modify the Subject line if you like, and type a message in the bottom text field.
7. Click Share to send the invitation to your contacts.

FIGURE 5-16  You can invite others to join you in the team site by choosing Share Site from the
Site Actions list.

116 Chapter 5 Creating Your Team Site with SharePoint Online

When the people you invited receive the e-mail invitation, they will be able to click the
link in the message and log in to the site.

What’s Next

This chapter gave you a close look at a number of the tasks you’ll want to a­ ccomplish
soon after creating your team site. Whether you want to keep it simple or create an
­elaborate design, you can enhance the form and function of the site by choosing a
theme, customizing the format, adding pages and content, inserting and editing p­ ictures,
adding web parts, and more. In the next chapter, you learn how to add files to your
SharePoint team site, share them with others, and check them in and out for your use.

CHAPTER 6

Posting, Sharing, and
Managing Files

IN THIS CHAPTER: HAVING AN ONLINE PL ACE  to gather is important, especially if

■ What is a document library you hope your team will gel into a productive group with members who
(and where is it)?
enjoy each other’s company and work well together. But you can create
■ Creating a document library
■ Organizing document libraries groups in all kinds of places—blogs, social media sites, and even in your
■ Working with document library
favorite instant messaging tools. Why do you need a tool as sophisticated
files
■ What’s next as SharePoint Online to give your group that extra something it needs

to succeed?
The file management capabilities of SharePoint Online enable you
to create document libraries, share documents and pictures, check
files in and out, and work with files in a way that will help your
team be as productive as possible. This chapter shows you how to
set up, manage, and work with team files in SharePoint Online.

What Is a Document Library (and
Where Is It)?

When you first begin using your SharePoint team site, you’ll find
a basic page already created for you—but that’s it. If you want to
add a document library—a place to store, organize, and manage
the files you’ll share with your team—you’ll need to add it yourself.
This section shows you how to think through, create, and add files
to document libraries in your site.

117

118 Chapter 6 Posting, Sharing, and Managing Files

PLANNING YOUR LIBRARIES

What kinds of files will your team share? This depends on the types of projects you’re
creating. If you’re preparing a marketing report, for example, you’ll probably work with
files like these:
■ A set of notes about the project
■ Minutes from meetings about the project’s design
■ The schedule for delivery
■ Images of products that will be included
■ A document with the text for the report
■ A worksheet showing the budget for the project
■ Reviewers’ comments or review forms

And this might just be the tip of the iceberg. Your project might be much more
­complicated, or you could have several projects going on at once—in which case, you
might want to create different document libraries on different pages to contain the files
related to the various projects.

One of the beautiful things about document libraries is that they enable you to cut
down on the number of versions you have available for an individual file. Suppose that
you write a draft of the text for the report and then post it to the site. Another team
member can edit it; someone else can do a content review; the designer can apply the
template and theme you want to use; a manager can do a line-by-line review—all using
the same file. This means you won’t have six different versions of the file that someone
will need to merge into the most recent copy. Using the file check-in and check-out
feature in SharePoint, team members can each make their changes to the file in the
file library so that all changes are incorporated in one file and you don’t run the risk of
u­ sing the wrong file when it’s time to finalize the project.

Creating a Document Library Chapter 6 119

Creating a Document Library

In the previous chapter, you walked through the process of adding a document library
when you added a web part in SharePoint Online. You can create a document library on
any page you’d like, anywhere in your site. The trick is to begin on the page where you
want to add the library. Then follow these steps:

1. Click the link in the navigation panel on the left that will display the page you want
to use.

Tip Alternately, you can create a new page for the library by clicking
[+ Add New Page] and entering a name for the new page. Click Create
to add the page.

2. Click Edit to the left of the Browse tab.

3. Click the Editing Tools Insert tab.

4. Click Document Library in the Web Parts group, and choose New Document
­Library.

5. In the Create List dialog box, type a name for the document library and click OK.
(See Figure 6-1.)

FIGURE 6-1  Create a new document library, and name it in the Create List dialog box.

120 Chapter 6 Posting, Sharing, and Managing Files

You can name the document library just about anything you want and include spaces,
punctuation characters, and even items that are no-nos in other names, such as percent-
age symbols and exclamation points. The name of the document library will also appear
in the Document Library list in the Web Parts group so that you always have the option
of adding the library to another page if you like.

Adding Documents

Now to make the library functional, you need to add some files. You can do this by
uploading files one at a time, or you can upload multiple files at once. When you’re first
creating the document library, you might want to add all the files you’ve saved using the
multiple upload feature, and then as you expand the files later, add them one at a time.
This section describes both processes.

Posting Single Documents

Here are the steps for uploading a single document:
1. Begin by clicking the Add Document link beneath the document library. (See

F­ igure 6-2.)

FIGURE 6-2  Click Add Document to begin adding documents to your library.

2. In the Team Files – Upload Document dialog box (shown in Figure 6-3), click the
Browse button.

3. Navigate to the folder containing the file you’d like to add. Click it and click Open.
4. Click OK to close the Upload Document dialog box.

The file is added to the list, and the type, name, date the file was last modified,
and name of the person who modified the file are displayed in the document
library.

Creating a Document Library Chapter 6 121

FIGURE 6-3  You click Browse in this dialog box to upload a single file.

Adding Multiple Documents

If you have a number of files you want to post to your document library, you’ll find it
easier to upload them all at once. Here is how to do that:
1. Begin by clicking the Add Document link.
2. In the Team Files – Upload Document dialog box, click Upload Multiple Files. The

Team Files – Upload Multiple Documents dialog box appears. (See Figure 6-4.)
3. Using the folder tree on the left, you can drag the files you want to upload to the

blue area in the top of the dialog box or click the Browse For Files Instead link to
display the Open dialog box.
4. If you choose to browse for files, navigate to the folder containing the files you
want to add and select them.
5. Click Open to add the files.

122 Chapter 6 Posting, Sharing, and Managing Files

FIGURE 6-4  The dialog box that appears when you click Upload Multiple Files in the Team Files –
Upload Document dialog box.

Tip By default, the Overwrite Existing Files check box is selected so that any
files you upload will overwrite files with the same name that are already
in your document library. You’ll find that it’s a good practice to keep this
check box selected so that versions of specific files are kept to a minimum
in your site and reduce the risk of someone on your team working with
an outdated version of the file. You’ll have to communicate this policy in
advance to the team, though, so that all members understand that new
versions of files will overwrite older versions with the same name.

Organizing Document Libraries

Keeping your documents named and organized effectively will go a long way toward
helping your team find what they need when they need it. You can help this process
along by choosing specific naming conventions for the various files you post. You might
ask everyone to name files with their initials and the date in the file name, or assign
­specific codes for different departments to use so that they’ll be able to recognize their
own files easily.

Organizing Document Libraries Chapter 6 123

In addition to ordering files by the naming conventions you choose, you can also a­ rrange
files based on the information in the document library table. What’s more, you can
c­ ustomize the columns in the document library to include information that you feel is
most relevant to your project.

Ordering Files in Your Document Library

By default, the document library shows four columns: Type, Name, Modified, and
­Modified By. You can sort the files by hovering the mouse cursor over the column you
want to sort by; when the down arrow appears, click the arrow to display a list of sorting
options.
For example, if you want to sort the Name column so that the files appear ­alphabetically
from A to Z, hover the cursor over the left side of the Name column header. Click
­Ascending (as shown in Figure 6-5), and the files are alphabetized in the document
library.

FIGURE 6-5  You can sort the files in the document library so that they are easy for your team members
to find.

124 Chapter 6 Posting, Sharing, and Managing Files

Modifying the Current View

You can easily create your own kind of document library with the columns that best fit
the information you need to know for your specific project. For example, you might want
to add a column that shows who a file is checked out to and list the departments that are
responsible for the various files.
Begin the process of modifying the current view of the document library by clicking the
top row of the document library table. The Library Tools Library tab becomes avail-
able. Click Modify View and a list of options—which include Modify View and Modify In
SharePoint Designer (Advanced)—appears. Click Modify View. (See Figure 6-6.)

FIGURE 6-6  Click the document library, and choose Modify View in the Library Tools Library tab to
modify the library.

You can change many things about the way your files appear in your document library.
Clicking Modify View displays a screen that offers you a number of settings you can
tailor to change the way the library appears. As you see in Figure 6-7, the choices on this
screen enable you to do the following:

■ Choose the columns you want to appear in the document library.
■ Increase or decrease the number of columns displayed.
■ Choose the columns by which the information will be sorted.

Organizing Document Libraries Chapter 6 125

■ Filter the items shown in the document library according to criteria you specify.
■ Add a button that enables team members to edit the document library.
■ Display check boxes next to individual items so that members can select multiple

files.
■ Group similar files.
■ Add totals for items in the document library columns.
■ Apply a style to the document library.
■ Choose whether or not files are displayed in folders.
■ Set a limit for the number of items that can be displayed in the document library

list.
■ Set the way you want the document library to appear when viewed on a mobile

device.

FIGURE 6-7  You can modify the current view of your document library and change the columns, style,
number of items allowed, and more.

You can change the columns in the document library by displaying some and hiding
­others and by rearranging the order of the columns as they appear in the table. First
select the check boxes in the Display column of the items you want to appear. Then, in